SLC supplementary exams termed inappropriate

KATHMANDU, June 17: The Office of the Controller of Examinations (OCE) has announced that it would allow SLC students who scored D or E in two subjects as per the letter grading system to take supplementary exams.

Among the total 588,152 students who appeared in the SLC this year, 147,583, including 39,257 from the exempted group, will have a chance to sit the SLC supplementary exams to be held from July 29 to August 5.

“Supplementary exams provide students with poor grade to upgrade their score,” said Prof Dr Biddhya Nath Koirala, an education expert. “However, the system followed here is inappropriate compared to the one followed in developed countries where students take supplementary exams in any subjects they want,” he said. “They get opportunity to upgrade their grade points in any number of subjects. They also have credit hour grading,” he added.

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Krishna Prasad Kapri, controller at the OCE, said that the government was yet to adopt the full-option supplementary exams. “It is the decision of the National Curriculum Development and Evaluation Council, which is headed by the education minister. The OCE doesn't have the authority to take decisions on such matters,” he claimed.

Suprabhat Bhandari, president of the Guardians' Association Nepal, said that the government's decision to hold supplementary exams even under the letter grading system was not bad.

“But it is contradictory in the sense that the government had claimed no student will be failed under the grading system. The concept of supplementary exams only creates confusion,” he said.

“Their performance is comprehensively graded so as to end the discrimination of numerical grading,” according to OCE Controller Kapri.

This was the first time that the letter grading system was applied in the 82 years' history of the SLC exams.

The government has recently endorsed a new education act that provisions holding SLC exams in grade 12, as against grade 10 until now, and regional/provincial in grade 10.